


The Snow Cardinal

by MagmaticKobaian



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Chosen Problems, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, No Romance, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, copious amounts of snow and snow metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagmaticKobaian/pseuds/MagmaticKobaian
Summary: Soundlessly, Zelos marched out of the hotel, numbly drifting wherever his feet took him. It was only after he had arrived at that stupid church again that the concept of time and fatigue that his Exsphere had let him forget caught up with him, and his legs gave out as he was approaching the statue in the plaza. He lay where he fell, half-sunken into the snow.That was it, then. Lloyd had been the first person that Zelos felt he could trust, and in typical Zelos fashion, he had squandered and wasted it.His hair splayed across the ground, bright red locks seeping into the bone-white snow. Memories of his mother clawed to the forefront of his mind.He pulled out the Cruxis Crystal again. The light of the street lamps reflected in it a warm and comforting glow.“Well,” Zelos mumbled, his voice faint, “I had my chance.”-Zelos is hiding something, and Colette can tell. After all, she knows what it’s like to keep secrets from everybody else.
Relationships: Colette Brunel & Zelos Wilder, Lloyd Irving & Zelos Wilder
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	The Snow Cardinal

**Author's Note:**

> Only took me *checks calendar* six months (!?) to post another ToS fic! I think it's interesting that you can get the "Zelos lives" ending even if Lloyd rejects him to his face in Flanoir, and I wanted to explore how and why Zelos could potentially bounce back from something like that, despite the fact that his self-esteem is made of glass. I hope you enjoy!

Zelos wanted to die, even more than he usually did.

No matter how many times the group came back to Flanoir, they were always greeted by a furious snowstorm. Zelos had to wonder about the kind of person who would choose to live in such miserable conditions; perhaps they hated themselves as well. Unfortunately, the only doctor that could help Altessa lived in the snowy city. After taking Raine, Sheena, Presea and Regal as assistants to help with his treatment for the rest of the night, the remainder of the party was kicked out. Since raiding the Tower of Salvation with half a group wasn’t an option, they were stuck in Flanoir until morning. Colette and Genis had gone their separate ways, leaving Zelos to wander the city alone.

It got old, fast. The small town was made even smaller by its cramped and winding structure, nothing but snaking alleys and endless stairways. Every path he took led to the statue plaza in front of the church, the only place large enough not to be suffocating while being far away from the snowmen, which made his skin crawl. If it wasn’t bad memories dragging him down, it was the flurry of snowflakes and wind lashing against his face, and failing that, staring at his Cruxis Crystal.

Like a nervous tic, he would take it from his pocket, holding it like it was the world itself. Its unnaturally smooth curve was water rolling in his palm, a perfect sphere. It was like a marble, if marbles were parasites. He hardly wanted to look at the loathsome thing, but after seeing what it had done to Colette, it began to hold a dark appeal.

Death was amazing, but  _ dying _ was the tricky part. The Cruxis Crystal, it seemed, provided the perfect answer. The complete removal of the ability to think or feel, without any pain. If Zelos had known about it just a few months earlier, he would have taken the option without hesitation. So what was stopping him now?

The sound of crunching snow filled the air. Zelos peered upwards, noticing a familiar head of long blonde hair. As he placed the Cruxis Crystal back into his pocket, he let his mouth contort into a winning smile.

“Hello, my little angel,” Zelos cloyed. “Are you here to keep me company?”

“Hi, Zelos.” Colette didn’t meet his gaze, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “I was just… worried, is all.”

She glanced downward, her faraway expression bearing a holiness that both comforted and unnerved him. He pictured his sister standing in her shoes: A symbol of salvation for humankind, instead of a playboy who nobody would ever place any trust in.

“If you’re worried about Altessa, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Zelos waved his hand dismissively. He thought for a second, then continued. “You hear a lot of stories at high-society events. There was this one kid—son of a rich businessman, I think—who went down to Flanoir for a skiing trip and got banged up even worse than Altessa.”

Colette’s head whipped around towards Zelos, her eyes wide as her hair swept through the air.

“What!? What happened to him?”

Zelos grinned.

“Even though this guy was rich, he and his family are known for being a bunch of notorious cheapskates. So he figures out that skiing tickets are cheap in the summer months, and decides to take a trip to Flanoir for a summer vacation.”

It seemed like his public speaking lessons hadn’t gone totally to waste after all. Colette was enraptured, soaking up every word of the story. She had gone from absentmindedly leaning over a rail to standing upright next to Zelos.

“So the guy gets to the skiing lodge, and sees that hardly anyone is there. Not only did he get dirt-cheap tickets, but he basically has the place to himself. So he gets his skiis and walks toward the course.” Zelos left a gap for a dramatic pause, leaning inwards and lowering his voice for effect. “That’s when he discovers why nobody goes skiing during the summer in Flanoir.”

Colette raised her hands towards her chest, gripping her hands together. “What’s the reason?” she breathed. “What happened next?”

Zelos’s grin widened. “During the winter, all of the aggressive animals that live on the mountain are hibernating. But during the summer…” He trailed off with a drawl, soaking up the reaction. “Well, they aren’t too friendly with people intruding into their territory. When his little entourage finally caught up with him, they couldn’t tell his arms from his legs.”

She covered her mouth with her hands.

“That’s awful!” she gasped in a high voice.

“Yeah, it was pretty grisly.” Zelos made an exaggerated wince. “Luckily, he’s rich, and in Flanoir, so they’re able to get him to the doctor and save his life.”

Colette breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad he was okay.”

He put a hand up. “Well, it wasn’t all well and good for Mr. Failson over here. He managed to live with all his limbs intact, but his face had a number done on it. He used to be quite the ladies’ man, but now, he’s lucky if the ladies don’t run screaming.”

She frowned. “That’s sad… But at least Failson is still alive.”

“Well, his name isn’t actually ‘Failson’, that’s just an expression, it—” Zelos stopped, shaking his head. “Never mind. Anyway, the point is that I’m sure Altessa is gonna be fine.” He put on the ladykiller smile, a classic. “I’d hate to see a pretty lady like you worry yourself sick about it.”

Colette laughed, and even after it had faded, continued to smile. “Thank you for trying to cheer me up, Zelos.”

Zelos snorted. “You call telling a story about a guy getting mauled in the woods ‘cheering you up’?”

“You just have your own way of showing it.” Her voice was back to being gentle, but brighter than it had been before. “I can tell you’re a nice person deep down, even if you don’t want anybody to know it.”

Zelos didn’t let himself react, but the words had pierced right through his heart. For as ditzy and airheaded as Colette often acted, it was easy for Zelos to underestimate her—which made her moments of insight hit even harder.

“Yeah, yeah,” Zelos mumbled, turning his gaze away from Colette. “I’m getting sick of all this snow. I’m going back to my room.”

“Oh, okay.” Colette’s face fell, but she quickly covered it up. “Well, see ya later!” Colette hesitated for a fraction of a second before skipping off in another direction. Zelos watched her disappear into the whiteness of the snow.

* * *

As night approached and it grew colder, Zelos found himself unable to sleep. He would later say the wind kept him up, but in reality, his thoughts simply wouldn’t let him. Every time he closed his eyes, he either saw Pronyma, asking him to betray the only people who would consider themselves his friends, and accepting without a moment of hesitation, or his mother, cursing him with her last breath as she stained the snow red.

Zelos fished the Cruxis Crystal out of his pocket, which had been burning a hole there since earlier that evening. He held it above his head, and the dim moonlight glinted off of its otherworldly surface. His mind went back to its earlier question—if he would have taken this chance without hesitation before, what was stopping him now?

No matter how many times he thought about it, his mind always returned to one answer: Lloyd. Lloyd, idiot that he was, claimed time and time again that Zelos was his friend, that he trusted him. Zelos had to be a bigger fool than Lloyd, because he believed him, no matter how hard he pretended he didn’t. 

But Lloyd wasn’t completely oblivious. Zelos felt the heat of suspicion on his back more and more after every action, and after the incident at Altessa’s house, he figured there was no way Lloyd didn’t know he was up to something. And if that was true, that Lloyd didn’t really trust him anymore, did he have anything to live for?

“Only one way to find out,” Zelos whispered to himself, lifting himself from the bed. This was his last chance to talk to him alone before he revealed himself to be a traitor. If anyone could talk him out of doing something he couldn’t take back, it would be Lloyd. As Zelos approached the door, his stomach began wildly flipping and balling itself into knots. With a tensed hand, he knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” A muffled voice from the other side asked. “Come on in.”

Without giving himself time to think about it, he opened the door and stepped forward into Lloyd’s room.

It felt disturbingly intimate. For how much Zelos talked about his romantic exploits with his ‘hunnies’, the idea of being alone in somebody’s room, even if nothing romantic was going on, was almost nauseating.

“Hey, man,” he started, the faux-casualness searing his tongue, “you awake?”

There was a short pause. Lloyd’s face flickered with disbelief, then exasperation, then deadpan annoyance.

“…I just got sleepy right now,” Lloyd turned to go towards his bed, “G’night.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t be like that!” Zelos tried to make his pain sound as fake as possible. His mind was reeling from the shock of being rejected so out-of-hand, even if he knew he deserved it. “Come on, let’s go talk outside for a bit.”

All Zelos needed to hear was a ‘yes’. If Lloyd still had any trust in him at all, he would surely accept.

There was a long, long silence, at least from Zelos’s point of view. Lloyd stared through him, his face unreadable. After an agonizing moment of nothing, his gaze slid down to the floor.

“…I’m sorry.” Lloyd’s apology was dampened by a mumbled, tired tone. “But I should really be getting to bed.”

“That’s fine.” Zelos replied just a bit quicker and higher than he should have. “I’ll see you around, then.”

As he left the room, it took all the self-control he could muster not to slam the door.

As soon as he was out of sight, he took off his Exsphere, key crest and all, and put them in his pocket. Soundlessly, Zelos marched out of the hotel, numbly drifting wherever his feet took him. It was only after he had arrived at that stupid church again that the concept of time and fatigue that his Exsphere had let him forget caught up with him, and his legs gave out as he was approaching the statue in the plaza. He lay where he fell, half-sunken into the snow.

That was it, then. Lloyd had been the first person that Zelos felt he could trust, and in typical Zelos fashion, he had squandered and wasted it. His hair splayed across the ground, bright red locks seeping into the bone-white snow. Memories of his mother clawed to the forefront of his mind.

He pulled out the Cruxis Crystal again. The light of the street lamps reflected in it a warm and comforting glow. 

“Well,” Zelos mumbled, his voice faint, “I had my chance.”

His hand hovered over his chest, the Cruxis Crystal inches away from his skin. As soon as he pressed it down, it would all be over.

The snow had already made him numb on the outside. When it came down to it, all he’d really be doing was making his inside match.

Zelos brought his hand down.

There was a flash of white, and suddenly, his hand was empty. Blinking, he realized a pair of blue-trimmed white boots were planted firmly in the snow before him. His head rolled back to peer upwards.

Colette furiously clasped the Cruxis Crystal in one hand while tears blossomed at the corners of her eyes. She quaked in place, her hair whipping through the air as though channeling her rage. It held an apocalyptic significance that froze him in place.

“How  _ could _ you?” Colette wiped away a few stray tears, but didn’t dare tear her gaze from Zelos. “You’ve already seen what these do to people! So then why… why would you…?” 

Her anger faltered, letting terror take its place. The question burned as it lingered in the air.

“How did you know I was out here?” In his shock, the simplest, least challenging question slipped through. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Colette wiped her eyes again, swallowing a lump in her throat.

“I-I went to go ask Lloyd if he wanted to go look at the snow and talk, but he told me he was too tired. Then he said, ‘it’s funny, Zelos was just by here, and he asked the same thing!’”

Colette’s voice climbed ascending octaves. “So I went to your room to see if maybe you wanted to go instead, but you weren’t there! And I talked to everybody else, and they hadn’t seen you either!”

Hot tears rained down upon freezing snow, and for each one she tried brushing away from her cheeks, two more took their place.

“And I w-was just hoping that I was being s-stupid like I n-normally am, just w-worried about n-nothing,” Colette’s voice broke as she balled her fists. “But I came up here and saw you were just laying d-down in the s-snow, and… and…!”

Colette fell to her knees, bawling her eyes out and covering her face in her hands. The sounds of muffled, choked sobs overpowered the howling blizzard.

From his mute feeling of detachment, he couldn’t help but imagine what a sight it all was. A man collapsed in the snow, and a sobbing woman knelt over him. 

“Hey,” Zelos murmured. Colette removed her hands from her face; flushed pink from weather and red from tears. “What are you crying for?”

Colette froze, blinking a few times as she stared at Zelos with widened eyes. After a pause, she closed them, taking a deep voice.

“Sorry for this, Zelos.” Her voice carried a deeper, but familiar, apologetic tone.

“It’s not a—” He stopped, tripping back over her statement. “Wait, why are you apologiz—” 

Zelos had never truly understood the meaning of the phrase “seeing stars” until he had been literally lifted off the ground by the force of Colette’s front hand slap. His eyes popped and flashed whiter than the ground, and the world rocked and swayed in two directions at once. He staggered around, barely keeping his balance through numb shock and aching fatigue in his muscles as he nursed the point of impact. He glared at Colette with the eye that wasn’t currently being soothed alongside the entire left side of his face by his hand. She had also risen to stand, hands stil tense by her side.

“Ow! What the hell is wrong with you!?” Zelos had been completely torn from his gentle delirium. Colette silently folded her arms. She huffed, but her anger no longer seemed like it could end the world.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she shot back, “except that I’m worried about my friend, because my  _ friend _ was about to put on a  _ Cruxis Crystal _ without  _ telling anyone.” _

Zelos winced, mostly at the pain in his face caused by the ice burn of the snow and the lingering slap. “Why do you even care? Nobody actually cares what happens to me.”

Colette tightened her fists, and Zelos braced himself for a punch. Instead, it seemed as if all of her anger had left her, and she looked down at the ground.

“Why would you think that?”

He snorted. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m of no value to anyone. I’m a failure of a Chosen.”

Colette stared at him, her expression becoming blank, staring right into his soul.

“What happened, Zelos?” Her voice was so soft he barely heard it.

Zelos stood in silence, considering what to say. The very model of a Chosen wouldn’t have understood what Zelos had gone through. It felt almost insulting for her, of all people, to ask about him. Either way, he wasn’t going to be able to get his Cruxis Crystal back from Colette until he convinced her to, since he highly doubted he would be able to wrest it away from a grip of angelic strength. For now, his only option was the truth. Zelos sighed.

“It was snowing in Meltokio.” His voice was dull, lacking any trace of his storyteller flare. “I was making snowmen with my mother when she was murdered.”

There was the faintest of gasps from Colette, but she didn’t interrupt.

“The attack that killed her was meant for me,” Zelos looked down at his hands, “and with her dying breath, she told me I never should have been born. After that, Seles, my sister, was put under house-arrest. She would have made a far better Chosen than I turned out to be.” Zelos looked toward Colette, mustering all of the disgust he could manage into one glare. “I doubt you could understand that.”

Neither side said anything for a while, and the snow gently fell around them. 

“You’re wrong,” Colette finally spoke, yet her gaze was averted and her voice fatigued. “The problem isn’t with you. It’s with the whole system of the Chosen. Your worth as a person shouldn’t be decided by how good of a Chosen you are.”

“It’s easy for you to say that,” Zelos spat back. “You’re everything people look for in a Chosen. The entire  _ world _ looks up to you.”

Colette’s gaze drifted further toward the ground, and her reply was barely higher than a whisper.

“I didn’t want to be the Chosen, either.”

Zelos blinked. “What?”

She looked up at him, and he could see more tears were starting to form in her eyes.

“When I was growing up, the only thing I heard about was how great of a Chosen I was going to be, and how everyone was counting on me. But I didn’t w-want to die,” Colette sniffed and wiped her eyes. “No matter where I went, the only reason why people cared about me is because I was going to go on a journey to sacrifice myself.”

Zelos felt an uncomfortable knot form in his stomach. In the flourishing world, the Journey of Regeneration was an afterthought compared to the Chosen’s many other duties. He was always aware of it, sure, but it was an abstract ideal, a noble goal instead of an existential crisis.

“I thought I was a failure for being afraid of dying, and for being scared at what was happening to me as I became an angel.” She shivered, hands lightly brushing over the crystal attached to her neck. “I might not know what it’s like to be a Chosen that people don’t trust, but I do know what it’s like to have all of your senses taken away from you, even your own mind.”

Zelos was too dumbstruck to reply. 

“Why would you want that to happen to your sister?” She held herself, looking down at the ground. “Why would you want that to happen to anyone?”

“If I can’t live up to the role of being the Chosen, then what good am I?!” Zelos countered hotly, stepping forward. “My life has no meaning!”

Colette stared into Zelos’s eyes, refusing to back away.

“I asked Lloyd the same question.” Her voice was low. “Do you know what he told me?”

Zelos said nothing.

“He told me that, no matter what happens, whether I become an angel or not, I’m still me.” For the first time since she had found him lying in the snow, she smiled. “The same goes for you, too. We’ll be your friends, even if you think we won’t. Even if you betray us.”

A shiver went down Zelos’s spine that had nothing to do with the weather. “How did you...?”

“Angels have very good hearing.” Colette cut him off. She continued smiling, but an uncanny wryness had slipped in. “I don’t think your ‘secret meetings’ were as far away as you thought.”

He blinked, turning the information over in his head. “If you know what I’m going to do,” he slowly began, voice unsteady, “then why are you helping me?”

She stared to the side, a haunting grimness lining her face as her lips tightened.

“You’re not the only one who’s kept secrets from their friends.” Her shoulders drooped, but she somehow looked even more tense. “I…I lied  _ so many times _ to Lloyd during the Journey of Regeneration. I did everything I could to try to make him stop worrying, because I didn’t want him to be upset when I died.”

Her last word was delivered with such raw force that Zelos jolted in place. The edge in her expression softened, and she stared back at him.

“But even when he realized how much I had lied to him, he didn’t give up on me. If it hadn’t trusted me, I probably wouldn’t be standing here talking to you right now.”

The unsettling darkness in Colette’s face disappeared, replaced by a beaming smile.

“That’s why I trust you.” The warm brightness of her reply almost melted the snow around them. “I may not know exactly what you’re going through, but I know you’re a good person, Zelos. I know you can do the right thing.”

A small object came flying towards Zelos, and he caught it out of instinct. When he opened his hands, he saw the Cruxis Crystal lying in his palms.

“We should probably get going,” Colette muttered, looking out into the snowflakes swirling across the yawning shadows of the city streets. “I think I hear footsteps coming this way.”

Zelos stared at the Cruxis Crystal in his palm one last time. Then, he shoved it back in his pocket and took out his Exsphere and key crest, applying it back on his collar. “I hear ya. I think I’m gonna catch something if I stay out here any longer.”

They shared one last look, wordless, but heavy all the same. There was a grim but fierce hope painted on Colette’s face, a strength unmovable by even the most savage of blizzards. All Zelos could do was nod and walk back the way he came, the aching of his legs already fading. Trudging back to the hotel, pushing through the endless carpet of white, Zelos could only think about how much more he hated snow.

**Author's Note:**

> Lloyd went with Genis on this "playthrough," leaving Zelos and Colette out in the cold (literally!).  
> I used a tiny bit of dialogue from the game during the scene where Zelos talks to Lloyd, but hopefully I put enough of my own spin on it to make it not feel like a rehash.


End file.
